body.

"How I wish I knew!" she sighed to herself, half aloud.

Looking up, she met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps
he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you speak,
Miss?"

"No," said Candace, "I don't think I spoke. But I was wondering about
that--that--_thing_ up there," pointing to the Fort.

"That? That's Fort Dumpling, as folks call it. It is a kind of a queer
old place, ain't it? They don't use it now for no war purposes, but it
makes a pretty p'int in the landscape, and folks go there for picnics
and such in the summer season."

"When was it built?" asked Candace, charmed to find somebody able and
willing to satisfy her curiosity.

"Wa'al, I reckon it was about 1812, when we was a-tackling the British
for the last time. 'Tain't very much of a fort to look at; but if you
was to mount some of them powerful guns they make now on the walls,
them and the others over at Fort Adams yonder would protect the channel
pretty well. The shot'd reach clear across. Why, you hardly think it
perhaps, but not more'n four or five years ago, there was some folks who
had come on a kind of an excursion, taking their lunches up there by
Fort Dumpling, and some soldiers was firing at a long-range target over
there to Fort Adams, and one of the balls came over and hit a young
lady."

"How dreadful!" said Candace, her eyes measuring the long distance
between the two points. "And it seems so far away. I suppose the young
lady felt perfectly safe. I am sure I should have. Did it kill her?"

"Oh, no! they thought at first it had, but it didn't turn out so bad as
was expected. The soldiers, they felt mighty mean, I expect. You see,
they didn't intend a mite of harm to her or anybody; but it just shows
how far them big guns carry now-a-days. A war-ship now, unless she was
some kind of a monitor or that, would stand a fair chance of being
stove and sent to the bottom before she could get in to attack Newport."

"What a fanny little house that is close down to the water!" remarked
Candace, looking off to the opposite shore.

"That's Professor Agassiz's laboratory. Do y' see that kind of a cove
which sets in there near by the building, and a little black thing
sticking up out of it? That's the pipe of his steam-launch. He and the
rest go out in it and dredge for fish and such like, and then they
experiment on them inside."

"What do they do that for?" asked Candace.

"Wa'al, they want to find